tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 08 10:21:36 1995
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Re: Gaps in known Klingon grammar?
>Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 05:13:38 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>As HolQeD 3.4 pp 3-6 (by Captain Krankor) says, revelations by Marc Okrand in
>HolQeD 3.3 & 3.4 show that (a) a verb can't be used unmodified as a noun
>except as authorized in the dictionary, (b) that (if `X` is a verb stem)
>`X-ghach` can't be used as the plain infinitive of `X` except to produce a
>new specific scientific or philisophical term (if I understood it correctly),
>and thus a long list of common English constructions can't now be translated
>into correct Klingon, even so much that on HolQeD 3.4 p5 Captain Krankor feels
>himself driven as far as to directly challenge Marc Okrand to remedy the
>matter. As Marc Okrand likely has other things to do than to carry the sole
>labour of updating Klingon, is there a chance of us on tlhIngan-Hol getting
>together to produce a `choHmey qechmey ghItlh` = "List of Ideas for
>Alterations" that we could forward to him? This would include such patches to
>fill gaps as:-
Man, you get your mail fast! I got my HolQeD the day after I saw this
letter from you... and I live maybe 1-1/2h from Dr. Schoen, not across
several time zones.
Indeed, another interview with Dr. Okrand is in the works, in which we hope
to clarify some of the remaining details we're troubled with. More likely,
it will take quite a few such interviews to clear up most of what we want,
but hey, that's what it takes. Lists such as yours are being compiled and
will be written up the way Okrand likes them and all will be chatted about.
Fear not; HolQeD will get the results.
Still, I'm concerned about your "list"; its contents sound like an attempt
to make Klingon mirror all sorts of friendly things we're used to in
languages such as English... ignoringthe fact that *lots* of languages, not
just Klingon, manage just fine without them. As the saying goes, if you
want English, you know where to find it. There's no need to make
everything mirror languages some few of us feel comfortable with. If
Klingon doesn't seem to have something... maybe it just doesn't.
>(1) A way to produce the simple infinitive of any verb.
Why? Between 'e' and -meH and a nice simple verbal noun (some form of
-ghach, maybe, presumably yet to be clarified), what does a language really
need infinitives for?
>(2) In `X Z law' Y Z puS` (X & Y are nouns, Z is (verb used as) adjective), =
>"X is Z'er than Y", permission to omit or shorten the second occurence of a
>long phrase used as Z.
Hmm... I *did* notice in one of Guido's posts what looked like a law'/puS
construction with the puS clause missing. This is Not Good, by the way:
there's no evidence we can have comparatives in Klingon that don't compare
explicitly stated things. Still, some verbal anaphora of some sort might
be nice. But there are a zillion other things more important to know about
law'/puS. Like where to put Type-9 suffixes? How to make it a relative
clause?
>(3) Ability e.g. to use `tlhej` = "accompany" as an adverb "together" or a
>noun suffix "together with", by analogy of some other words that are also
>used as suffixes. (E.g. once when I was writing a bit of Klingon, I needed a
>word for "around" and found none, so I had no remedy except to venture to bend
>the rules and use the noun for "orbit" as a noun suffix = "around".)
Sorry, that doesn't make sense. Okrand very deliberately *GAVE* us the way
to say "with": read HolQeD 2:4, page 18. Okrand specifically discusses the
case of "with" and says the only way to do it is by using "tlhej" as a
*verb*, since, after all, that's what it is. Using complex sentences may
seem long-winded to an English-speaker, but it certainly makes as much
sense as a linguistic method as anything else. Again, why remake Klingon
in English's image?
Similarly with "prepositions." I'd expect the suffixes of Klingon to be a
pretty much closed set; I'd be very surprised to hear any major new
additions to that set. We pretty much have all we need... if you use them
right. Perhaps we could use some more *nouns*, but that's something else.
After all, Hebrew doesn't have a true preposition for "around", and neither
does Welsh. Nor for "under" or "over" or "in front of"... hey look,
English doesn't have a preposition for "in front of" either (well,
"before", but we can do without it). Okrand told us how to say "above",
right? "nagh DungDaq", using a *NOUN* of position (Dung) and the normal
locative suffix (-Daq). Maybe some *nouns* for "area nearby" and so on
would be handy.
I recall *I* used "orbit" as you mention in a post in response to your use
of tlhej as though it were a suffix, not in Klingon, but in English, saying
"The earth moves through space orbit the sun" as an example of how you
*can't* blithely invent prepositions from verbs and stay grammatical.
>It will likely take us and Marc Okrand a long time to get the Klingon language
>complete: e.g. after 50 years Tolkien was still altering bits of his Elvish
>`Quenya` language and its supposed history.
True, though I suspect Tolkien was trying for something of a different feel
and style... I have the highest respect for Okrand... but higher for
Tolkien, and he was working from a different angle.
~mark